Another Weather Source for Flight Planning

[TonyK]

I was reading an article the other day on a astrophysics site about a very strong coronal mass ejection CME that interfered with HF radio frequencies for over an hour.  This got me thinking about our reliance on GPS and other forms of orbital navigation technology.  Given that a solar flare can knock out GPS, electric grids and interfere with radio transmissions should we brief ourselves on possible CME events that may interfere with our navigation as a normal part of our flight planning?  Is it just the geek in me who thinks about these things?

[carusoam]

Depending on the age of your GPS equipment... Do you perform a Raim check.  

There are many reasons that GPS signals get interfered with.  Including two GPSs with arguing antenna issues...

Having a second means of navigating to the ground, like an ILS is pretty good...

And if we are discussing end of the world type nav interference...  on the East Coast we fly out over the ocean, descend below cloud level very slowly, then turn around and fly over the land in VMC... 

if the clouds turn into fog, you never see the ocean... could be a long swim home.  

Haven't had to do that yet...

Best regards,

-a-

[TonyK]

My 89B is so old and out of date it believes the earth is still flat.

[Piloto]

You can still rely on VOR/DME, ADF navigation and dead reckoning.

José

[toto]

Not sure whether it was posted to MS, but I saw this article about a month ago and thought it was interesting..

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/radio-navigation-set-to-make-global-return-as-gps-backup-because-cyber/

 

[kortopates]

With so many GPS satellites and a couple WAAS correction birds, interference with one or two satellites isn't likely to be an issue. At least I have never experienced a LOI issue, not one that wasn't due to my own equipment. And I am anal too - but not that anal

 

 

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